


Everything and Nothing

by soaringrachel



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, M/M, also i can marry off bucky and natasha if i want to, it is a tony story, okay i tagged all those ships but this is not a tony/anybody story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 01:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soaringrachel/pseuds/soaringrachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark falls in love six times, or thinks he does. Pepper sets him straight on why he kept doing it.</p><p>(or, Tony dates everyone when he really shouldn't)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything and Nothing

The first time Tony falls in love it’s a surprise, because he never thought he was the type of man to fall in love.

But there is Pepper, so wonderful and so there and so _Pepper_ , and when he notices it he falls into love with her (and into bed with her, which is a nice perk, but for the first time it’s only a perk). He likes being with Pepper, likes telling people they’re a couple, likes saying “I love you,” likes it sort of being his job to notice how wonderful she is, likes knowing he’s hers and she’s his.

He rolls over in bed one night and says, “I never thought I was the type to fall in love.” Pepper studies him, chin hand. “You’re not,” she says.

The next morning, everything is the same, except she never kisses him again.

 

The second time Tony falls in love, it’s with Bruce, exciting, brilliant Bruce, and it’s as much fun to seduce him as it is hard work. Tony’s slept with men before, in the interests of Science, and enjoyed it; he enjoys sex with Bruce even more, even if it’s clear, in this case, Bruce is getting more out of it than Tony is. He doesn’t mind that—Bruce is comfortable, and smart, and beautiful in an entirely different way from Pepper, and always _nervous_. Tony is so happy to make some of the tightness leave the area around his eyes.

It’s a really good thing, his thing with Bruce, but it never feels like the kind of good thing that lasts forever, and when he finally takes Bruce out for sushi, brings him home and kisses him a sad goodnight, gets back in the elevator alone, it doesn’t feel devastating to either of them as much as it feels inevitable.

It doesn’t mean they aren’t friends.

 

The third time Tony falls in love, she’s not interested. That’s what she tells him, “I’m flattered, Tony, but I’m not interested,” red hair precisely cutting the air as she shakes her head, _no_. He’s just gotten her into the habit of calling him Tony all the time; familiarity doesn’t come naturally to her, and he’s worked hard to win it, to be a person she can call by a first name, a person she feels comfortable saying, “It’s not you, it’s anybody,” to, which she does, even if she can’t make eye contact when she says it.

Clint backs this up later, when Tony goes to ask him about it. “Never been one for romance, Tasha,” he says, “Can’t blame her, really.”

Tony doesn’t ask if he tried, received the same answer, because in the end it doesn’t matter, does it?

(Years later, at the wedding, Clint and Steve manfully tearful best men, the conversation comes to mind. But Tony’s too happy, today, for it to sting.)

 

So the fourth time Tony falls in love, it’s because you can’t fall in love with Natasha Romanoff without starting to notice Clint Barton. His steady eye, his bitter humor, the way he hovers over not just Natasha but all of them like a guardian angel—it may be easy to miss, but it’s all there, always there, and once you do see it it’s impossible to stop. And Tony doesn’t want to stop.

So he does date Clint, but it doesn’t really work, and he doesn’t want to think too hard about why not. Because he likes Clint, he really, really does, likes being here in his kitchen at three in the morning, stealing a cup of coffee and making a face when he realizes it’s tea, just making conversation. So why is the conversation he’s making about how he really wants to stay friends?

No, he doesn’t want to think too hard about that one.

 

And the fifth time Tony falls in love, the next time, he doesn’t do a lot of hard thinking. There’s a lot of laughing, and a lot of roughhousing, and when they get around to it, a lot of sex. So much of all three, in fact, that Tony’s pretty sure to anyone on the outside this must not look like love at all, but it is, it is so much.

Thor takes him out of himself for a while, somehow shuts up the thousand voices in his head, because Thor’s so emphatically just got one voice, the same on the inside and the outside even, and Tony adores that and makes fun of it and is generally in awe of it, because _how_. Except when they’re laughing together, or roughhousing together, or sleeping together, he gets a little glimpse of it, and it’s lovely. (Even if he wouldn’t want it for himself all the time. But he’s glad _Thor_ has it all the time.)

And at some point it goes from laughter and roughhousing and sex to just laughter and roughhousing, and Tony barely notices. (They do, actually, continue to sleep in the same bed sometimes. Because they make each other _tired_ , Tony and Thor, but it’s such a good kind of tired.)

 

The sixth time Tony falls in love, he’s pretty sure it’s for real. What they have, he and Steve—well, for the first time since Pepper he unlocks all the super-strength encryptions on the file marked (in code, of course) _Best Wedding Ever_ , and tinkers a bit.

They still fight, of course, but suddenly the fighting is _the best part_. Except for, wait, the kissing, and the comm chatter, and the Steve being there in the morning in striped pajama bottoms, or actually, all the parts are the best part. It’s so easy, or rather it’s just the right amount of hard for Tony, who’s a guy that needs some difficulties to survive for all he pretends to like the smooth life.

It’s easy, but it isn’t perfect. There are fights that can’t, could never, be explained as the best part of anything, there is comm chatter that almost costs them a battle, there are angry kisses and ugly kisses and kisses that just don’t feel right, and one day Tony takes out his wedding file and knows it’s the last time.

 

He didn’t cry, for any of the others, but he cries for Steve, ruins Pepper’s jacket like he’s come full circle or some such crap. They’ll be friends again, he knows, best friends maybe—hell, Cap and Iron Man already are, Steve and Tony can’t be too far behind—but there will be no Stark-Rogers wedding with Steve dashingly in uniform and Fury forced to officiate. There will be no more mornings when Steve is just _there_ and it feels normal.

“You were wrong, Pep,” he says, “I guess I was the type to fall in love after all.”

This time he doesn’t know if she’s looking at him, his face turned inward toward her neck, but there’s still a pause before she says it.

“Oh, Tony,” she tells him, and he hates and loves the understanding in her tone, “You don’t have to be in love with someone to love them.”


End file.
